Tacit Culture and Change: A Model of Change Constructed From Institutional Assumptions and Beliefs

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Abstract

Higher education today faces a conflict between
increasing societal demands and decreasing
budgets. Innovation and change in higher
education occur in the face of limited
institutional resources. Meeting the challenges
confronting colleges and universities is best
accomplished by applying planned change
efforts that recognize tacit culture (underlying
assumptions and beliefs) and incorporate these
cultural components into the change process.
To date, however, change theory in higher
education provides limited insight into
institutional culture and how culture interacts
with change. This is complicated by the fact that
there are very few acknowledged methods for
revealing tacit components of culture in higher
education. This study provides the fields of
change theory and institutional culture with, first,
knowledge about revealing culture in higher
education and, second, a model of change
grounded in a single institution's assumptions
and beliefs. Using a variation of Sackmann's
(1991) open-ended, issue focused interview
method for uncovering tacit components of
culture in corporate organizations, this study
reveals cultural assumptions and beliefs about a
planned change project in a two-year
community college. Further, a model of change
is constructed from the revealed assumptions
and beliefs that explains the role of this tacit
culture in the probable outcomes of the change
project.